


our hearts won't rust

by liketheroad



Series: our hearts won't rust [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-21
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketheroad/pseuds/liketheroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He wants to hold the face of the man whose thoughts he is even now struggling to keep separate from his own, wants to share with him the greatest truth and cruelest lie Charles knows - that he isn’t alone, that neither of them are, not if they don’t want to be.</i> AU.  Charles meets Erik during a summer abroad when he is 17.</p><p>warning: vague d/s themes, consensual use of abilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Charles has been in Prague for less than twenty-four hours when he it hears it. A voice, stronger and more anguished than anything he’s ever heard, raging out against the silence Charles has labored for years to cultivate and protect within his own mind.

He has to close his eyes and think of nothing but blackness, a void of sound and images, for almost an hour before the voice pressing against his pupils diminishes, and another hour after that before it fades entirely.

Once he’s calmed his mind, Charles paces about the length of his lavish hotel room, trying to parse the frantic thoughts and half formed plans that had been assaulting him for the majority of the afternoon.

If he concentrates hard enough, he can call up the memories of the voice without inviting it back into his mind entirely as a live and frenzied stream of consciousness. He sees maps, a blur of dozens of generic hotel rooms and anonymous flats, stacks of faded dossiers for what have to be Nazi officers from the war, judging by the uniforms he sees in red soaked flashes in his mind. He sees knives, moving on their own accord, hears screams and pleas for mercy, but no matter how hard he searches through the memories, finds none.

He paces and wrings his hands, wondering what to do with these images that already seem intimately his, belonging to him in a way no other’s thoughts ever have.

He wants to find the person they really do belong to - he wants to soothe the hurt and anger that pollutes every memory, every thought.

He wants to go out into the strange city he chose for this one bout of adolescence rebellion he will allow himself, wants to search the foreign streets until his feet ache and his heart is pounding in his chest.

He wants to hold the face of the man whose thoughts he is even now struggling to keep separate from his own, wants to share with him the greatest truth and cruelest lie Charles knows - that he is not alone, that neither of them are, not if they don’t want to be.

\---

Charles spends a sleepless night out on the balcony of his hotel room, staring unblinkingly out onto the city and trying to command the buildings to reveal their secrets as he can so easily command minds, to force the location of his mystery man from the dark cobblestone streets.

He tries to open his mind once again, to reach out for this stranger, but something seems to have happened, and the thoughts that were once so painfully strong are now lost to him, locked tight where he has not been given permission to tread.

His late night vigil produces no results, but, undeterred, at sunrise Charles sets out to find in body the answers his mind could not, straw-hat tilted against the sun, feeling only marginally absurd in camel coloured trousers, a matching linen blazer, and a walking stick. The stick gives him something to hold onto, adds the illusion of a destination, a sense of purpose beyond the bottomless _need_ to find the voice still echoing faintly in his head, to find the man behind it.

He walks for hours, never tiring, able to school his mind to ignore the heat, the blisters blooming on his feet.

He walks until even his mind can’t protect him, until he must collapse into a wicker chair in a bustling cafe, making an exhausted motion for water and then haplessly shoving an abundance of bills into the server’s hands.

When the water is brought to him Charles downs it in one go, breathing raggedly but letting his gratitude shine through in a somewhat unhinged smile.

He knows he must look a sight, a purple faced teenager traveling alone in a country where he can only speak the language because he can read the locals’ minds, his mutant synapses filtering their language into his own. He is only 17, looks younger, and this is his first proper time away from home, away from the lonely castle in which he grew up, from the equally lonely prep schools and academies he wasted away endless hours of his youth studying in, searching for answers.

He’s just getting over this uncharacteristic bout of self-consciousness when he hears it again - so loud and clear that he’s bent double, wincing against the cacophony of sound. He reaches out blindly with his mind, sending a frantic plea for silence, for a moment of reprieve, and when it comes he’s left stunned, alone, wiping blood from his nose.

The lovely waitress who brought him water is back, staring at him with growing concern, and Charles musters another weak smile, pushing more foreign bank notes at her and staggering away from the table, out of the cafe and into the teeming street.

It’s there, amidst the crowded hum of so many minds, he hears the voice a third time, this time directed at him consciously, pushing for him to listen.

 _Who are you?_ and then, more persistent, _**What** are you?_

 _Someone like you,_ Charles answers in a rush, feeling something deeper than hope, far more dizzying than mere excitement, gripping hold. _A friend._

There’s a silence that speaks volumes, disbelief and a sharp jolt of denial, but Charles presses onward, heart hammering in his chest. _Or I would very much like to be. I’m Charles, Charles Xavier. Please, tell me your name. Tell me where you are._

 _I’m alone._

Charles closes his eyes, shaking his head, concentrating harder on a single thought than he has ever needed or wanted to in his entire life.

 _Not anymore_.

\---

There’s nothing after the exchange outside the cafe, nothing but the silence inside his own mind, until three days later, when Charles is fruitlessly lying on his bed, trying to chase down sleep, and there is an unexpected knock on his hotel room door.

When he gets up to open it, Charles is knocked back, the metal bed-frame snapping free and coiling around his wrists and neck, holding him in place.

The door opens, and the man who enters is at once a stranger and someone he feels sure he has known his entire life.

“Charles, I presume?” he asks, his grin shark-like and mesmerizing, the kind Charles thinks eyes must follow around any room he enters.

He tries to nod, the restraints allowing for little more than a jerky twitch of his chin.

“And your name?”

“You didn’t guess that, too, along with the rest of the intimacies of my mind you invaded?”

“No,” Charles says, wishing he could properly shake his head. “Your thoughts broadcast across miles, possibly further than that, but never your name. Even now, I can’t wrest it from your mind.” It’s true, and strange, perhaps stranger than any of this.

Another grin, more sinister this time, the kind Charles saw in flashes right before knives flew and guns fired without a hand to guide them.

“A name is a very precious thing. One not to be trifled with or taken for granted.”

Charles thinks of the pain he saw in this man’s mind, the wire fences and the too-bright lights, shining relentlessly overhead. He swallows with difficultly, feeling overwhelmingly as if he is about to burst into tears.

Something in his look must stop his captor short, a curious tilt of the head followed by a long, piercing stare.

In another moment, his neck and wrists are free, and Charles cradles his left wrist in his other hand, rubbing at the bruise he knows will be there the next day.

“It’s Erik,” he hears, wrenched from reluctant lips and an even more reluctant mind.

Still, Charles must smile, cannot help but keep smiling, when he answers, “Hello, Erik. I’m Charles. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Erik’s mouth quirks into an answering smile, wry but genuine. “Has it been so long?”

Charles gets up off of the bed, eager to close every kind of distance between them. He nods, smiling still, and says, “It’s been a lifetime.”

\---

They begin meeting at the cafe where they first spoke - or as close as they came to it - everyday after that.

Sometimes Charles drinks tea and pulls secrets from their fellow patrons’ heads, sharing them with Erik and smirking when Erik’s expression changes from something grudgingly like respect into a genuine grin. Other times, Erik simply smokes and broods over the ease with which Charles uses his powers, struggling to so much as move a piece of cutlery across the table when his mood is calm.

“You’re a terrible influence on me,” he chides Charles, sounding far more serious than Charles would prefer.

“You must find balance, my friend,” Charles tells him, not for the first time. “Rage and pain may have been what first sparked your power, but they will never be enough to let you master it.”

Erik’s eyes flash, angry defiance setting his mouth in a sharp line, but Charles only smiles ruefully, shaking his head.

“Don’t look so cross, Erik. I’m not asking you to give up on rage entirely - just to temper it a bit. Balance - balance is the key. You must find that balance within yourself.”

“Balance between what?” Erik snaps impatiently, the frustration in his voice bending the spoon that sat stubbornly still only moments before.

Unbidden, Charles’ smile grows. He really must do better at containing his reactions to Erik’s flashes of temper. It won’t do to keep encouraging him further.

“Between rage and serenity.”

\---

As the weeks pass by, Charles’s possessions begin to migrate from his hotel room into the cramped flat Erik has rented, one by one, until by silent agreement Charles has moved entirely into Erik’s rooms, and then, inevitably, into his bed, his body at home in the same spaces Erik’s mind has already accustomed his own to know.

He can feel Erik growing restless, the city not offering him as many answers as he’d like, but Charles holds on tight, in body and in mind, doing everything in his power to keep Erik with him.

Erik is a friend like he has never had before - a partner, an equal, and day by day something deeper and more inevitable than anything he has ever felt grows inside of Charles, stronger even than what he feels for Raven, who he loves like a sister, almost like his own child, although Erik constantly assures Charles he is still yet a child himself.

“You are not so much older than me,” Charles protests, with what Erik immediately mentally catalogs as the arrogance of youth.

“Maybe not according to the calendar, my friend. But in the years I have been on this earth there has been more _life_ than you can hope to comprehend.”

Indignant, Charles presses at Erik’s mind, not to take his secrets, but to prove he already knows them.

Erik only scoffs, turning away from him where they lie side by side in bed, naked save the thin cotton sheet covering them both.

“Just because you’ve seen it doesn’t mean you _know_ ,” he whispers roughly, and will not be coaxed to roll over when Charles presses his chin hopefully to Erik’s shoulder.

“I haven’t just seen it, Erik, what you went through, where you’ve been. I’ve _felt_ it.”

Erik laughs, ragged and harsh, and will only say, “And I _lived_ it,” before closing his eyes and his mind, shut tight against Charles for the rest of the night.

\---

Erik is hunting - searching the four corners of the globe for the man who killed his mother, the man who held him captive more irrevocably than the Nazis ever could, the man who experimented on him like a rat and tried to turn him into a weapon.

 _He didn’t **try** , Charles_, Erik always corrects him when Charles makes the mistake of phrasing it that way. _He **succeeded**_.

But no. Charles doesn’t believe that - he will not believe it.

Not with the beauty he sees in Erik’s mind, the ferocious capacity for love, the fiendish sense of humor, of mischief, all buried deep under years of rage and layers of steel.

Erik accuses him of only seeing what he wants to see, and Charles accuses Erik of the same thing.

\---

They have breakfast every morning out on the balcony, and Erik drinks freshly squeezed orange juice - one of the few indulgences Charles has seen Erik allow himself, other than Charles himself - and smokes while Charles eats dry toast and narrates the thoughts of the passersby.

These quiet mornings together inevitably turn into heated debates, as Erik reads aloud from the paper - listing endless atrocities and injustices meted out by the humans against their own people - daring Charles to say he’s wrong, that if this is what their own species can expect, then there’s certainly no hope for them. Still, Charles argues, pushes back hard against Erik’s blood lust and his cynicism, pressing every advantage he can think of, even if it’s just the way Erik’s heart softens, sometimes, when Charles manages to smile at him just right.

\---

One morning in June, Charles wakes up alone.

He searches the flat, but each room is empty, and when he tries the front door, he finds it locked from the outside, held in place by a force greater than any simple deadbolt.

Cursing silently, and sending one vindictive spike of anger out to wherever Erik is, Charles renews his search of the flat, this time not looking for Erik, but rather for any sign that he might be planning on coming back.

Relief is like a physical thing when Charles finds the note, left contentiously on the refrigerator door, the magnet holding it in place still vibrating from the intensity of Erik’s mood when he placed it there.

Hand shaking a little, Charles reaches out and removes the note, reading the simple words _Back soon_ like a prayer, repeated over and over on his lips, and then he closes his eyes and feels the echos of Erik in the paper itself, feels the apology Erik refused to write down, but probably knew Charles would be able to sense anyway.

\---

But he doesn’t come back - not for two days, and after that Charles decides he’s waited long enough.

Erik’s alright - at least well enough to still be holding the locks around the flat in place - even the windows are clamped shut, their metal latches immovable - but Charles doesn’t let that deter him.

Erik can’t control glass, after all, and it’s a simple matter of breaking through their bedroom window and climbing out onto the fire escape - an exit route he likes to imagine Erik left open for him, confident enough Charles wasn’t going to need it.

As soon as he’s outside, Charles can hear Erik’s distress, as though he was locking that away from Charles’ sanctuary in the flat as well.

It’s easy to get a track on his location - too easy, almost, with Erik’s emotions running so hot, fear and fury blocking out everything else.

He’s been taken, somehow, and now he can’t get out, can’t get free, and Charles is the only one who can save him.

\---

He commandeers a cab and its driver, controlling the man’s thoughts with a surprising lack of guilt, but he doesn’t even pause to regret even that much, only pushes the cabbie’s mind to desire nothing more than taking the most efficient route to the warehouse Charles has ascertained Erik is being held, helped along by flashes of faded signs from when it was still a place where car parts were made.

Once he’s close, he can feel the hostile, thuggish minds of the men and women who have taken Erik prisoner, can feel Erik’s rage, straining against the thick plastic chains they’ve used to strap him in. Charles listens closer, and hears plans unfolding in the mind of the leader, plans to call Schmidt, to tell him they’ve found his lost protege.

Charles has to breathe deeply to steady himself against the sting of betrayal he feels - coming even stronger from Erik inside.

They’re mutants - his and Erik’s brothers and sisters - and they’ve taken him, taken Erik as if he was just another object to be sold to the highest bidder.

It’s easy, then, to let his anger take over, to grow so strong and focused that the five other mutants inside the warehouse are knocked cold, their consciousness’ dropping from his sight in unison, and then he runs - runs to Erik as fast as his feet can take him - sending his reassurances even faster with his mind.

Erik is still struggling fruitlessly against his plastic chains when Charles finally reaches him, but he’s grinning, and once he’s free Erik catches Charles’ face between his hands, pulling Charles onto his lap for a bruising kiss.

“My hero,” he says, his mocking tone doing nothing to cover up the overwhelming gratitude soaking Erik’s pores.

Charles smiles down at him, still triumphantly straddling Erik’s waist, and kisses him again.

\---

Erik wants to kill them, at first, the mutants who betrayed their own kind, the ones who dared to take Erik from Charles. But, in the end, they compromise, secure in the knowledge that none of the other mutants reached their goal of actually contacting Schmidt, of revealing Erik’s location to him. Charles searches their minds to be sure of this, and to look for anything that might be useful to Erik, some sign of where Schmidt is, but finds none, and eventually Erik permits him to simply erase their memories.

And if he takes a little more than necessary - removing some of their happiest memories along with all the ones involving Erik - well, Charles still thinks they should consider themselves lucky.

\---

 

Sometimes they don’t speak aloud, not for days on end, conveying everything they need to in gestures and looks, the occasional thought passed between their minds in secret communion.

Charles is slowly teaching Erik to move metal without steel in his heart, to call upon his power when his thoughts are light and happy, the rare and precious moments when they are.

The first time Erik moves their bed while they’re in it together, Charles comes without even realizing he was close, gasping for breath as Erik’s triumphant laughter washes over him.

“Not much balance in that, my friend,” Erik huffs, still laughing, once Charles has finally recovered himself, grinning back ruefully.

“Perhaps not, but I should hope not much rage, either.”

Erik shakes his head, eyes going suddenly dark, fiercely protective, and he cups Charles’ jaw and holds his gaze when he says, “Only at the thought of you being taken from me.”

Charles wishes he could soothe Erik’s fear, wishes he could assure Erik that this will never happen, but he stays silent, knowing Erik would never believe him.

\---

Erik teaches him how to smoke, how to drink, how to make love, or maybe they teach each other that one together.

The lessons stretch over the summer like the ivy that curls around every inch of his family home, endless and tangled.

They go out every night to pubs until Erik drives a butter knife into the thigh of a man who looked at Charles too long, and after that they start drinking in the street, paper bags wrapped around half-empty bottles they carry back with them to Erik’s flat - _their_ flat - to sit out on the balcony and share cigarettes and silence.

Erik rolls his own cigarettes and Charles loves little more than to watch him, his long fingers moving skillfully, movements so seamless they become a blur.

“Another one of your abilities?” he teases, just to see Erik’s answering smile, another shark-like grin.

“Just practice, I’m afraid.”

Nodding, Charles accepts the cigarette Erik is offering him, letting Erik light it with a zippo that hangs suspended in the air in front of them.

“Nice trick, that,” he compliments almost shyly, always hesitant to call attention to the use of Erik’s abilities in peaceful moments between them for fear that it will upset the ever precarious balance within Erik’s mind.

But this time Erik simply nods, allowing himself to be pleased, and watches with unabashed appreciation as Charles inhales slowly, letting the smoke curl seductively around his tongue before he finally exhales.

The heat in Erik’s gaze holds for a moment longer before his leer breaks out into a grin, and then a laugh, as he pulls Charles against him roughly, and Charles goes willingly, nestling his head against the crook of Erik’s neck, eyes closed, lost to the warmth of Erik’s embrace and the soothing balm of his mind, sated and, for once, content.

\---

“They’d hunt us down, all of us. Experiment on us like animals, brand us, track us.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

\---

They use their powers on each other all the time - it’s what passes for trust between them.

Charles is free to read Erik’s mind, welcome even to plant the occasional suggestion in his head - never enough to give him an idea out of nothing, to completely change his mind, but Erik allows the occasional nudge, especially when Charles is being playful, when it’s his only way of asking Erik to give him something that they both want.

In return, Erik is permitted to hold Charles’ limbs tightly in place with the twisted metal frame of their bed on the nights when he’s feeling theatrical or when Charles particularly needs it, to hold Charles down until he screams, or to drag Charles into to bed, tossing him around by the belt buckle. And, at all other times, he’s welcome to tug at the matching leather cuffs, cleverly lined with stainless steel, that Charles’ wears on either wrist when Erik wishes to direct Charles’ attention and or command his movements, a present Erik gave to him without comment, watching in silent satisfaction when Charles put them on.

\---

Erik takes his luxuries in the simplest forms - good scotch and the occasional bottle of fine wine, fresh fruit whenever he can get it. Mostly though, he lives in spartan splendor, caring little for the quality of his surroundings or dress.

It’s surprisingly easy for Charles to slough off the excesses he grew up taking for granted, to settle into Erik’s bare and deceptively simple lifestyle. He eats what Erik puts in front of him, brings home wine and cigarettes whenever Erik lets him out of bed long enough to leave the house, offers help with the rent and finds his half shockingly small - not a lie to save Erik’s pride, just proof that their neighborhood is as dodgy as Charles had been expecting. He’s happy with Erik, happy to be wherever he is, and finds he cares little for anything else.

The only luxury of his upbringing Charles retains is his weakness for long baths, soaking for hours with a book, and, since his education with Erik, often a glass of wine and a cigarette or three.

Erik’s bathtub is the only spacious thing about the flat, a huge claw-foot pool Charles can completely submerge himself in.

He loses whole days inside that tub, holding his breath under water until he comes up gasping for air, already missing the unique silence of being submerged, so far from any thoughts that might crowd in against his own.

Other times he simply reads whatever books may be lying around, and with Erik there’s always something new, the product of his odd habit of collecting used books wherever he goes and then leaving them behind, stacked in hotel rooms and apartments, waiting for someone else to discover them. It’s the most generous thing Erik does, such a quiet, simple thing, but Charles can tell that he does so thoughtlessly, a kindness Erik doesn’t think hard enough about to consider a weakness.

Best of all, however, are the times when Erik joins him, climbing naked into the water with Charles, to cup his ass and drag Charles against him, sometimes to make love, and sometimes just to hold him close, running his hand against the length of Charles’ spine and blowing smoke into the air, already thick with steam.

\---

They usually stay in, unless it’s to get more alcohol, cigarettes, books, and food. Charles has managed, since Erik was taken, to dissuade him from any further attempts to search for Schmidt or any of his fellow conspirators in the city, although Erik’s has disappeared at least once to replenish his supply of weaponry.

On one of the rare times they do venture out, they have a picnic, which Charles suggests, but doesn’t actually expect Erik to agree to.

He does, though, almost eagerly, and they set out together on two bikes Erik liberates from their chains, with a rucksack full of food and drink strapped to Erik’s back, laughing like the children they never quite got to be as they make their escape from the city limits, out into the winding countryside.

Once they’ve found somewhere suitable, Charles spreads the thin blanket they brought with them out on the grass, and Erik busies himself unpacking the food and uncorking the wine.

He takes a long drink and passes it to Charles, smiling appreciatively at the way Charles’ throat moves as he swallows.

Charles smiles back, lips still wet and red from the wine, and Erik makes a choked growl before yanking Charles to him by the wrists with nothing but his mind.

“These were a good present,” Charles whispers encouragingly into Erik’s mouth, his hands still bound by his steel and leather wrist-cuffs to go wherever Erik wants them too, a thrill of possession passing dizzingly between them.

Erik bites down hard on Charles’ lip in response, and pulls Charles’ right hand down to the buckle of his belt a second after Charles plants the suggestion in his mind.

\---

In August Charles begins to receive phone calls from his mother’s assistant reminding him about his upcoming term - his first - at Oxford. A week after that, he starts feeling Raven’s impatience at the back of his mind, worry tinging the edges of her frustration. He ignores his mother’s distant attempts at parental concern, but sends hasty reassurances to his sister, promises to return home soon with lots of stories and presents. She’s only 13, and for awhile the prospect of gifts is enough to satisfy her, but by the time August is turning into September, not even that will quiet her mind, and he finds he must concentrate at all times to block her out, to feel nothing but the heady solitude of Erik’s singular presence.

It doesn’t help that Erik’s restlessness has taken on a life of its own, haunting their steps like some kind of a caged animal, following them wherever they go. No matter how much they go out, now, how long they drive or meander the narrow streets, Erik can never be far enough from their flat, and no matter how many times Charles takes him to bed, makes him forget, in the morning he is still up before the sun, staring out the window with dissatisfaction hanging around his shoulders like a dark cloud.

But still Charles holds on, to the summer, to Erik, until finally it is Erik who receives a phone call.

Charles is in the kitchen when it happens, too far away to hear Erik’s voice, and for once he refuses to listen in with his mind.

The conversation only goes on for ten minutes, maybe a minute or two more, and then Erik stalks out of the room with a terrifying kind of purpose.

Charles stares at him, feeling as if he has already been left behind before Erik even speaks.

“I’ve just gotten word that there’s been reports of someone closely resembling Schmidt living in Quebec City. I have to go,” he says forcefully, as if daring Charles to question him, and then adds, “You could come with me.”

But Charles cannot, and Erik already knows this.

“Not where you are going, my friend. I can’t follow you down that path, and I’m not sure that I can bear to let you go down it either.”

Erik looks at him for a long, hard moment, before crossing the room to crush Charles against their bedroom door, strong hands wrapped painfully around his face.

He kisses Charles, just once, and Charles tastes the ash in Erik’s mouth, the burn of alcohol, and knows it is good-bye.

“I can’t watch you do this, Erik,” Charles calls after him, as close to a plea for him to stay as he can manage.

Erik stops, and for an instant Charles believes it has worked, but when Erik turns to look at him, his face is cold and utterly foreign to Charles.

“Then don’t look.”

 

 

 _Three years later_

Raven touches his hand and smiles at him, and Charles tries his hardest to smile back at her, but from the look on her face following his efforts, he doesn’t succeed.

“You should be celebrating,” she reminds him firmly, leaving her hand covering his.

They’re in his dormitory at Oxford, and from the open window he can hear a hundred voices doing just that, celebrating their success, their graduation.

He tries again to smile, and does a little better this time, enough for Raven to smile encouragingly back.

“I will, I am.”

She laughs.

“Where are you?”

He sighs, he isn’t allowed to read her mind, and yet she seems to find it all too easy to read his.

“In Prague,” he answers honestly.

She groans. “In Prague, always fucking in Prague.”

He smiles easily at her pun, unintended though it may have been.

“I was just trying to work out whether he’d be proud of me, or think it was a foolish, selfish waste of time, these past few years, this degree.”

“And another one after that,” she points out, unable to let go the opportunity to needle him about it, her other thoughts on the matter notwithstanding.

Charles acknowledges her comment with a slight grimace. “I am trying to help, you realize. Not just myself - all of us.”

“I know you are, Charles, but even you must know that if you weren’t so brilliant, no one would even be letting you graduate, let alone actually listen to anything you’re saying, not with an undergraduate thesis talking about the possibility of mutants with superhuman abilities, already among us.”

“Just in a few footnotes,” he equivocates, ignoring her eye roll.

“And so, what did you decide? Would the great and terrible Erik Lehnsherr approve of your thesis?”

Charles closes his eyes, and conjures up memories of Erik’s grin, the strong grip of Erik’s hand on his shoulder.

“I think he might approve if it made me happy,”

It doesn’t take a mind reader to tell what Raven thinks of that, although he knows she tries to stop herself from saying,

“But you’re not, are you? And you haven’t been - not for three years. Honestly, Charles, it’s as if you’ve cast yourself in a trashy romance novel!”

“Give me Austen, at least,” he jokes weakly. “Surely there’s some dignity in the consistency of my affections.”

She sighs, leaning close to touch her free hand to his cheek, the other still resting on his now upturned palm.

“Are you ever going to get over it, Charles? Over _him_?” Her eyes are kind, full of sympathy for him, but her voice is dripping with disdain for Erik, bred over three years of watching Charles pine, fueled by a genuine and even touching disbelief that anyone could have been stupid enough to leave her brother behind.

Charles laughs, trying again to break the mood. “I will, I am.”

She shakes her head, but continues to leave her hand where it is.

\---

They do go out celebrating, eventually.

Charles tries to remember all the lessons Erik taught him - even the ones about drinking.

He’s just beginning to lose track of the amount of lager he’s consumed when there is a sudden blankness, all the other minds in the pub suddenly going silent and scared. Just as he’s struggling to focus, to clear his mind of the alcohol’s effects, there’s a loud noise - then another - chased on its heels by a high-pitched scream.

He’s heard one like it before, but never quite so frightened.

 _Raven._

He’s up and out of his seat, running for the exit, calling her name as loud as he can and thinking it as hard as he’s able, but there’s nothing, she’s nowhere, not in sight and not in reach of his mind.

He keeps running anyway, searching every mind he passes, desperate for something, some sign that someone has seen, any trace at all - but still there is nothing, no Raven, and no sign that she had ever even been there.

\---

He searches for six sleepless days, reading more minds than he’s ever attempted before, often all at once, never pausing to rest, barely pausing think.

But she’s just gone - she’s gone and she’s gone and she’s all that he had left, maybe all he _ever_ truly had, and now he’s lost her. He’s lost her, and for all his brilliance, all his power, he can’t think of a single thing to do to get her back.

\---

He wakes up in an alley he doesn’t recognize, clothes soaked through, wallet and shoes gone.

Staggering on numb legs, Charles forces himself up, trying to understand where he is, what happened to him.

He waits, he watches, but there is no one watching back, no one following him, no minds he can perceive that have any comprehension of who or what he is.

Feeling hungrier than he’s ever been in his life, and with a headache more splitting than the one he got the first time he felt a flood of foreign thoughts crashing through his own mind, Charles is eventually forced to conclude that he simply passed out, there in the street, and was lucky enough to get away with only having his wallet and indulgently expensive loafers stolen.

Clearing his exhausted mind as quickly as he’s able, Charles gathers his bearings, realizing he’s blessedly close to campus, and somehow manages to drag himself the rest of the way back there.

How he gets to his room is even more of a mystery, and he can only thank his own recent madness and distraction for the still open door that awaits him.

He crashes to the floor, no hope of trying to make it to the bed, and loses consciousness before he can even remember if he’s closed the door behind him.

\---

When he wakes up, it’s to a voice inside his head, repeating his name over and over, low and persistent, with an increasingly strong hint of desperation.

 _Charles._

 

 _Charles!_

 

 

 _Damnit, Charles, **wake up**_

At that his eyes fly open, and, absurdly, he says aloud, “I am.”

There’s no response, of course, and in another minute, he manages to right himself enough to say again in his mind, _I am._

Some people might not think it’s possible for brains to let out a sigh of relief, but none of those people are telepaths as strong as Charles Xavier.

It takes him another minute - less - to register something else.

 _  
**Erik!**   
_

_Easy, Charles, for god’s sake, easy. Are you trying to give me an aneurysm?_

 _I’m sorry, I’m sorry,_ he thinks as quietly as he can.

Warmth, affection so strong it’s as though he’s gone back in time, floods Charles’ synapses. _It’s alright, it’s all alright._

 _When did you - what are you doing here?_ he thinks before he realizes how foolish that sounds. Erik could be anywhere in the world, and Charles would still hear him.

 _If by ‘here’ you mean Oxford, then I’m afraid I won’t be technically be there until this afternoon. But if you mean inside your mind, waiting for you to wake yourself up, then the last 20 odd hours or so._

 _What? How is that possible?_

 _You tell me, I’m the one who moves metal with his mind, remember? You’re the telepath and brilliant geneticist._

 _How did you know that?_

Erik’s thoughts come to him wry and deprecating, although Charles isn’t sure if that’s directed at him or Erik, _I’ve been keeping track of you, of course. Top marks, full scholarship for the graduate program in the fall. Well done, Charles,_ somehow, impossibly, Erik does manage to sound proud.

 _That answers one question._

 _It shouldn’t have been a question whether or not I’d watch out after you, Charles,_ Erik chides, sounding oddly hurt.

Charles shakes his head, and then sends an image of himself doing so to Erik’s mind, getting a quiet laugh in response. _Not that, I meant you being proud about my graduation. I’d - it was a matter of some debate as to whether or not you’d approve of my scholarly pursuits_.

 _Disagreement among?_

 _My sister and I - my--_

Raven, she’s still - still missing - gone - taken - from him - on his watch - and he was meant--

 _Charles! Calm your mind._

He obeys the order with difficulty, drawn back to himself only by the seductively soothing hum of Erik’s mind sharing his own.

 _They took her._

 _I know._

 _You know?_

In that moment, Charles swears he can almost see Erik smiling.

 _Of course. That’s why I’m coming to help you get her back._

\---

By the time Erik is within the city limits, Charles has pulled himself almost entirely together. He’s dressed and showered and on his feet, waiting with a mix of giddy anticipation and coiling dread to finally see Erik again.

When Erik gets inside Charles’ building, his mind is an endless chant of Charles’ name, his all-powerful eagerness to be with Charles again knocking out any of Charles’ lingering anxieties, and he’s smiling, wide and welcoming, when Erik inevitably bursts through the door.

For a moment, they just grin, lost to the joy of seeing each other again, and then Erik’s eyes snap down to Charles’ wrists, still bound by the matching bracelets Erik gave to him, all those years ago.

“You still wear them,” Erik says, his tone something akin to awe.

Charles nods, almost absently. “Of course I do.” He’s never considered taking them off, not once, not even when the first year passed and he finally accepted that he might never actually see Erik - at least not in person - ever again.

He shares the thought with Erik, wanting him to know - to understand that Charles is still his, that he’s been his all this time.

“I don’t even - I don’t even think of them, now.” It sounds like a lie, even to him, but it’s true. Most of the time, he forgets he’s even wearing them. They’re a part of him now.

Like Erik is, like Erik will always be.

Erik crosses the distance between them in a few quick, purposeful strides, and Charles holds his face up, chin tilted in an invitation, a challenge, and Erik takes both, takes Charles, kissing him until Charles can forget, at least in that moment, that Erik ever left him at all.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, when he’s released Charles.

Charles raises an eyebrow, the last thing he expected from Erik was an apology. He rather feels like he owes Erik one, in fact.

“About your sister,” Erik clarifies, still holding onto Charles by the shoulders. “We’ll get her back.”

Charles smiles, confident now. “I know we will.”

\---

They hash it out for hours, sharing whatever details they know, and Erik knows a surprising amount.

“I’ve always made sure to know where you were, roughly - that is, I checked in on you, occasionally, mentally. Nothing too invasive --” he assures Erik, receiving an unconcerned hand wave in response, “but just to check you were safe - you’ve been doing the same?”

Erik nods. “I don’t have your tricks at my disposal, of course, and I had to be sure no one I set about keeping tabs on you would look too closely, discover what you truly are, but I’ve made enough connections in the dark corners of the world to get the job done. Then, of course, there were the times I was able to visit myself.”

Charles’ eyes widen. “You came here? When?”

Looking infuriatingly smug, Erik rattles off half a dozen occasions he slipped into Charles’ city undetected, explaining that he’s been training himself to put up mental blocks against telepaths since they’ve been parted.

It feels like a blow - a betrayal greater than Erik’s leaving ever was - until Erik catches his wrist with a flick of his own, drawing Charles’ hand to his and linking their fingers together.

“Not for you, my friend. I’ve met others like us, and one in particular very much like you, although not nearly as good company. She’s Schmidt’s - Shaw, he’s calling himself now. Very powerful. I’ve had to take precautions, you see. Can’t have her peering inside my head while I’m looking for her lover.”

Charles nods shakily, accepting this, and squeezes Erik’s hand to remind himself he can, now, to remind himself that Erik is finally close enough to touch once more.

“So you knew I was still at Oxford, you knew I was safe enough. But how did you know what happened to Raven - what happened to me?”

Erik gets up from the bed they’ve been sitting on together, pacing the room. “It was right after it happened, I think, when I first heard you. It was a shock, you were so loud and urgent in my head - not like the vague ways I’ve occasionally felt you poking around in there over the years - strong enough to knock me out. When I came to, I could still feel you, your hopelessness, your fear, but I couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t figure out what had actually _happened_ , not until you finally passed out yourself, and then your dreams told me the story, images of your sister, there one minute and gone the next, and suddenly all the panic and anger was given context. I was already on my way by then, flying over the Atlantic, but once I landed I was able to begin my investigations. It wasn’t mutants, Charles, not any we know, not from what I can tell.”

“No,” Charles agrees, feeling a familiar heaviness in his heart he’d once naively expected to be banished by Erik’s return, those rare times he allowed himself to hope for it. “No, it was people, the humans. I - I couldn’t make anything out, where they took her, why, but I’ve been thinking about it now - about what she can do, what I can do - she’s never been as able to hide as I have, it’s always been a risk for her, even leaving our house and--”

“She wasn’t careful enough, and someone found out about her,” Erik finishes.

Charles sighs. “But not about me.”

Erik shakes his head, “I wouldn’t be so sure. If your powers were blocked, if you couldn’t get a lock on any of the minds that took her, chances are they were protected somehow. Which means they know full well what you can do, they just didn’t want to take you, not yet.”

“They can have me if they want,” Charles says, out of anger, not resignation. “But they can’t have her, I must get her back,”

Erik smiles, vicious and wide. “Oh, we’ll get her back, but they can’t have you either. I’ve lost you once, I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

\---

The following evening, just before they’re about to set out on the trail they’ve been able to piece together - Erik’s skill for tracking and Charles’ telepathic abilities finally beginning to show results when used together - Charles pauses, finding there’s one last thing to say.

Not noticing yet that he’s stopped, Erik makes his way for the door, hand on already on the knob when Charles calls out to him.

“Erik!”

Erik turns, eyebrow quirked impatiently.

“You were right.”

Erik closes his eyes, just for a fraction of a second, and then turns away, opening the door.

“I wish I wasn’t.”

\---

In the car on their way to Raven, Erik asks, “So, what’s your theory?”

“My theory?”

“Why could I hear you - why can I always hear you, no matter how far away you are, when I’m no telepath. And why did your mind know to reach out for mine when you were in trouble, even while you were asleep?”

“I’m working on that, but I’m afraid the science of it might not hold the true answer. Before you, it was only Raven I could communicate with like that, the only one who I had a connection with strong enough so that she could push back when she wanted to, strong enough that I could always feel her, even at great distances. Normally, my abilities have a limited range, and I’ve worked hard to strengthen those natural barriers - elsewhere lies madness, I’ve always thought. For years, I focused more on keeping people out than anything else. But I’ve never managed it with you, not even at first. Before I’d even met you, your mind called out to mine.”

“Is it because we’re also mutants, Raven and I?”

Charles smiles, feeling oddly shy, and answers, “Not entirely, I don’t think, but in part, surely.”

“And the other part?”

Charles’ smile grows into something indulgent and fond, surprised, his ego somewhat gratified to hear the uncertainty in Erik’s voice, the hope for something he’s somehow still afraid to claim as his own.

“That would be love, my friend. Strong enough to keep you with me, at least in mind, even when you couldn’t be in body.”

For a moment there’s a tightening of the bracelets around his wrists, reassuring and strong, the only answer Erik needs give him.

\---

Raven’s being held in a secret government facility - American, if Charles is reading the accents right.

“They want me to know,” he whispers to Erik, feeling frustrating curling up his throat.

Erik nods. “It’s a trap, then, snatch her, wait for you to attempt a rescue, two mutants with one stone.” He grins, then, full of the promise of blood, and says, “Good thing they don’t know anything about me.”

Charles leaves him in the car, waiting, and slinks towards the building, knocking out the security guards in front of the building with ease, slipping in through the door he made one of them unlock before passing out.

He gets all the way down to the second level of the basement before they catch him, taking down as many minds as he can before he’s driven into unconsciousness by a blow to the head.

When he comes to, he’s strapped into a gurney, naked, and Raven is reading him the riot act inside his head. She’s across the room from him, but it’ll always be louder in his head.

 _Easy_ , he soothes, sending her as many waves of calm as he can muster, _this isn’t actually as stupid as it looks_.

 _Oh no?_ she scoffs, fear for him making her anger seem somewhat less than credible.

 _I’m just a diversion, you see_ , he reassures her, smiling a little.

Already he can hear screams in the minds of the agents and scientists in the levels above them.

 _A diversion from what?_

More screams, loud enough for Charles to hear with his ears, now, and a screeching crunch of metal, and then the doors to the lab they’re locked in fly open.

“Me,” Erik announces, his smile manic, victorious.

Charles beams at him, not minding that the hands that free him are sticky and streaked with blood.

Together they free Raven, and she pauses only for a second to stare at Erik open mouthed before taking Charles’ hand and pulling him along after her, all of them running together up and up until they’re out of the basement, out of the building itself, leaving a trail of broken bones and minds in their wake.

\---

In the car, Charles fumbles into a change of clothes Erik thought to bring with them, and curls up with Raven in the backseat, stroking her hair and whispering reassurances that are more for his benefit than hers.

She’s been gone from him for nearly nine days, forced to endure god knows what - the flashes he gets from her so horrifying and rage-inducing that he has to force himself to stop looking before he ends up ordering Erik to turn the car around so they can return to the facility where she was being held and burn the place to the ground.

Erik drives, and drives, and eventually Charles feels Raven come back to herself, back to him, and then she punches him, hard.

“What was that for?” he protests, rubbing the offended area mullishly.

“For taking so long,” she snaps, the only thank you she can offer him.

“I’m terribly sorry about the delay in heroically saving your life,” he says sarcastically, the only apology she’ll accept.

“I suppose it does seem to have worked out in the end,” she allows, resting her head once again on his shoulder, and Charles closes his eyes, secure in the knowledge that Erik will carry them both to safety.

\---

When Charles opens his eyes again, he no longer recognizes the scenery.

“Where are we?” he asks, rubbing at his face and trying to blink away the confusion.

“Still in England, but just barely,” Erik informs him, turning around in his seat to look back at both of them.

Raven looks like she’s considering punching Charles again.

“This is Erik?” she demands, the answer clearly a foregone conclusion.

Charles nods anyway, feeling suddenly proud, wanting to show Erik off, despite the circumstances. Maybe because of them.

“He helped, got us out - do you remember?”

“I remember,” she says, sounding distinctly unimpressed.

Erik offers her a jaunty two-fingered wave, which makes Charles laugh, and Raven glare.

“I’ll consider the rescue a sufficient apology for the hell you put my brother through these past three years, that is, if I have your word that you won’t be doing it again,”

Charles thinks he should know, should already be sure, but still his heart leaps into his throat when Erik nods solemnly, and says, “You have my word.”

\---

Raven falls asleep again, somewhere between arriving at the private airplane hanger Erik drives them to and getting into the small aircraft he steals for them, coaxing its engine to start and lift them off of the ground and up, up into the air with nothing but a few moments of concentration and the idle flick of his fingers.

“You’ve finally mastered the balance, I see,” Charles applauds, only wishing that Raven was awake to be suitably impressed.

Erik grins at him, hands hovering casually over the flight controls, effortlessly holding them up in the sky, and says, “You taught me well.”

Beaming unselfconsciously, Charles leans back in his seat, arms folded behind his head.

“Comfortable?” Erik teases, not needing to look where they’re going to know how to get there.

Charles smiles at him, happier than he can remember being in years, maybe ever, and says, “I am now.”


	2. though our parts turn to dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The nights are their time to be together, to regroup from the pressures and struggles of the day, when they belong to the children, to the cause. At night, they belong only to each other._ In which Charles is jealous of the war-effort, Erik has grown distant, and battles are improbably won by the power of love. (sequel to 'our hearts won't rust')
> 
> Same warnings for d/s themes and consensual use of powers apply!

Charles awakens to the sound of metal tearing apart, an awful, grating whine he can never quite seem to get used to.

Rubbing his face tiredly, Charles sits up in bed, reaching out for Erik with his mind, but he’s too far gone - his concentration on the task at hand too steely to be penetrated.

Sighing, Charles gets up entirely and pads over to their bedroom window, looking out onto the courtyard and watching Erik train, a demonstration, this time, observed by a small group of their mutant pupils, their family, watching him in awe.

Charles smiles a little at that, remembering all too well the days when he could only stare, open mouthed and worshipful, at nearly everything Erik did.

Things aren’t really so different, now. Only Erik is.

Since finding Schmidt in Argentina four years ago and killing him together, Erik has changed in subtle and devastating ways. With Schmidt gone, his anger had no outlet, no direction, until Erik let it unfurl inside him, turning from a singular purpose and enemy out towards the whole world - the whole human species, at least.

Charles can’t say he disagrees, exactly, not after Raven - not after everything they’ve seen together the past several years - but he wonders sometimes at the cost. Not just to the world, but to Erik, to all of them, the soldiers they’ve become, preparing for a war that seems destined to stretch across the entirety of their lives.

\---

He sets about making breakfast - no small task for a household full of teenaged mutants - beating two dozen eggs in a bowl and humming to himself.

He’s just started the omelet - industrial size frying pan and all - when Erik and their students start wandering into the kitchen, crowding around him to see what’s on the menu, jostling each other, laughing, still feeling giddy and all-powerful from Erik’s display.

Erik lingers once the rest of them have made their way into the dinning hall - Raven and Hank staying behind to help with toast on the opposite end of the kitchen.

Erik presses a hand to the small of Charles’ back, nosing at Charles’ neck, breathing him in.

“Don’t look so glum,” Erik chides him softly, laying a kiss on Charles’ collarbone. He knows why Charles is upset - or can guess, anyway - and Charles waits to see if this will be one of the times he gets an apology.

“You know I don’t mean to shut you out,” is all Erik offers, and as usual, it’s what Charles must be willing to accept.

He turns around, eggs momentarily forgotten, and molds himself against Erik’s chest, accepting the embrace and the kiss that follows.

“I still hate it, hate that you can do that, hate that you do it around me,” he allows himself to say, once Erik has released his mouth.

Erik nods, looking pinched and remorseful, but only for an instant, before his resolve takes over, brushing away the apology as if it was never even there.

“I know. But it makes me stronger - being able to block out everything - even you. My abilities require my full attention, and there’s still Frost - out there somewhere, and god knows how many others like her. We need to be prepared, Charles. All of us.”

Charles nods, returning to the task at hand, but smiling a little when Erik uses his abilities to move the frying pan for him, flipping the omelet with ease and gently lowering the pan back onto the element.

“Thank you, Erik,” he murmurs, and smiles more when Erik continues to hover behind him, a reassuring presence at the back of Charles’ mind.

\---

There’s a dozen of them, now, including Erik, Raven, and Charles himself. They live together in Charles’ family estate, although to the outside world the mansion looks anything but habitable. He’s placed a mental ward of sorts around the place, making the mansion appear like a ramshackle ruin to any humans who might pass by, or dare come looking for them. He’s strong enough now to hold the mirage up at all times, barely needs to think about it, instinctual as breathing.

It’s just one of the many ways they’ve retreated from the world, clinging to the illusion of safety they find within the mansion walls, within the walls of Charles’ own making.

The only times any of them leave the grounds is to replenish their supplies or to go out looking for more of their kind - aided by Cerebro - something he and Erik and their first recruit, Hank McCoy, put together. It’s slow going, partly because they must work in secret, partly because they’re not willing to take anyone who isn’t ready to entirely leave the world behind - to abandon their biological families to join their real one.

Still, they’ve made progress over the years, collecting - and retaining - nine, at least for the moment.

Charles knows he shouldn’t pick favorites, but he can’t help himself. He comforts himself by assuming it’s partly just the consequence of time; he’s closest to their first recruits - a handful of children who were barely reaching puberty, barely coming into their abilities, when Erik and Charles found them. There’s Hank, of course, already brilliant and about to graduate from Harvard medical school when they knocked on his door. And there’s the Summers brothers - Alex and Scott - taken from an orphanage only weeks after their parents died. There’s Darwin, ever the protector, playing older brother to all, and Sean, who has attached himself firmly to Alex’s side since the moment they met, following him around everywhere, as loyal and enthusiastic as a puppy. And once there was Angel, before she was taken from them, their first loss - the one that made Charles want to lash out for the first time, to shed blood.

They are his children, his and Erik’s, the first of their new regime, their race. All told, the original eight of them have been together for almost five years, learning together, finding others like them, building a life, a home.

Raven is with Hank, now, and since his experiments to enhance his own abilities, to draw out the mutant within, they travel together in matching blue skins, reveling in their uniqueness. Hank almost never leaves the facility, not because he’s hiding, but because he’d have to, out there, and the very thought of it makes his skin crawl. Raven is the same, hating to change even for a moment out of her natural blue form. Of course, her ability makes her passage into the outside world easier, at least on the surface, but they hate to be parted from each other, hate to leave the freedom, the sanctuary, they’ve found together these past years.

Hank makes Raven happy, and that alone would be good enough for Charles, but he’s a stronger ally than even that, a better friend. He has one of the brightest minds Charles has ever known, ever touched, and they can talk for hours, on almost any subject, the way Charles once thought only he and Erik could speak. Raven likes to tease them both, saying that Hank is like Charles but better, and that’s why she chose him. It makes Hank stammer in a way Charles understands Raven finds adorable, and he doesn’t mind the teasing references to her childhood crush, something that years of familial love and companionship inevitably washed away.

There’s something building between Alex and Sean as well, driven stubbornly along by Sean, but they’re far less willing to put a name on it, to carry their relationship around like a badge of honor, the way Hank and Raven do.

Charles understands it, of course. Whatever he and Erik are to each other - whatever Alex and Sean are starting to become - it’s private, special. And for all that they’ve left the world behind, there’s still a lifetime of socialization to account for, to confront, to struggle against.

In their new world order there will be no such prejudices, small minded and backward thinking, but for now, they are just learning, to be themselves, to be proud.

\---

Charles sleeps in the master bedroom now, the one that once belonged to his parents, his mother and father, before his father died and his mother and her new husband moved into a different wing of the mansion entirely.

Charles has no childhood memories of the room, no associations beyond the vague sense of foreboding that filled his heart whenever he passed its always closed door growing up.

But it’s the room Erik chose - selected because it has the best view, not of the scenery, although it has that too, but of the training grounds that have become so crucial to all of them. From their bedroom window, they can watch their students battling against their own limitations, against the laws of nature itself, and they can sip tea and stand side by side, proud of what they’ve accomplished.

\---

Every night before they go to bed, unless Erik is out recruiting, Charles and Erik go out running. The nights are their time to be together, to regroup from the pressures and struggles of the day, when they belong to the children, to the cause.

At night, they belong only to each other, and they can run with the wind in their faces, laughing and egging each other on, until the world shrinks down to only they two.

Sometimes, at the end of these runs, they will reach the edge of their property, the edge of Charles’ mental walls, and they will lie down in the grass and make love, alone with each other, under the stars.

\---

On paper, the line dividing the two sides of their conflict is easy to draw. Humans on one side, mutants on the other - humanities’ past versus its future. But in reality, of course, things are not so simple.

In reality, the greatest threat facing them - their family - comes from Emma Frost, who, in the years since he and Erik executed her lover, has risen to the highest echelons of American government, ironically spearheading the nation’s anti-mutant agenda. Using her abilities to gain such influence and erasing any knowledge of her own mutant heritage the same way, Frost has controlled both the introduction of mutants to the world - in a brutal display of power by a former ally of hers, Azazel, which left hundreds dead - and has subsequently shaped policy bent on containing the threat she so effectively demonstrated mutants could pose.

The instances when Charles has managed to penetrate her mind have been few and far between, but her motivations are easy enough to guess. They took from her the only man she ever loved, destroyed the future they envisioned together, obliterating her hopes of one day ruling by his side. She has no hope left now, only an unquenchable thirst for revenge - on the world she will never rule, on the mutants who took that dream from her. Most of all, she wishes for Charles and Erik to suffer - to take exact vengeance for the life they took and the mercy they showed her, a kindness Charles is unsure he and Erik will ever be able to forgive themselves for.

\---

Alex and Scott are arguing again, their anger loud enough to bring Charles down from his study and into the training range he’s set up for them in his step-father’s old bunker.

Scott is pushing at Alex, yelling at him to concentrate, to be disciplined, to master his ability instead of letting it dominate him, and Alex is shouting back, his fury soaked in humiliation.

Charles raises a hand and clears his throat, letting them know he’s there, and they both jump to attention, red-faced.

“It’s alright,” he begins, hating the shame that flares on their cheeks. “Scott, I seem to have misplaced Erik, and we’re due for an appointment with Cerebro in an hour. Check the east grounds for me, there’s a good chap.” Accepting this softly worded dismissal, Scott leaves, casting one almost apologetic look towards his brother before disappearing behind the metal doors.

Sighing, Alex raises his chin, as if bracing himself for a blow, or at the very least a lecture.

Charles puts his hands in his pockets, wondering at Alex’s ability to still be suspicious of him, to fear him, after all this time.

“I’m not angry with you, Alex,” he says, wishing desperately that it didn’t need to be said, but knowing that it did.

Alex just stares at the ground, fists clenched tight at his sides. “I’m not getting any better - after all this time I’m still so _useless_ ,”

Charles closes his eyes, locating the pain in those words in stark flashes - there’s Scott, right there in that tone of bitter disappointment, mixed painfully with envy for what his brother can do. But there’s Erik, too, his endless need for them to prepare, to be strong. They’re a terrible pair of people to feel you’ve let down, and Charles would know.

Charles puts on his most reassuring smile, walking closer to Alex and giving his shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

“It took Erik years to be able to use his abilities without anger, without the adrenaline of some terrible situation. Honestly, he still has trouble with it sometimes. These abilities, these powers, sometimes they come easily, sometimes they don’t. The key to unlocking your full potential comes from accepting what you are, from realizing that your abilities are the most intimate, true part of yourself. But you still fear them, and I understand why, but you must find a way to conquer that fear inside you, Alex. You must give yourself up to it, let it run its course, instead of always trying to stay one step ahead of it.”

“How do I do that?” he asks, still a child, almost, even though he’s just past 17.

Charles’ smile turns rueful, now, and he shrugs. “I’m afraid that part’s something each of us has to decide for ourselves.”

\---

He can only use Cerebro so much, on Hank’s orders, and on Erik’s. It’s dangerous - going in too long - not only to himself, but to the minds Charles reads, the people he finds. If he concentrates on anyone of them too long, they’ll die, and sometimes he can get so lost in there, in all the beauty and chaos, that he’ll want to stay, to never wake up, never come back to reality. But, inevitably, that will be when Erik touches him, says his name, and Charles will be rocketed back to earth in an instant.

\---

“It’s time to get back on the road,” Erik tells him over a glass of cognac and a half-finished chess game.

Charles groans, not wanting to have this conversation, not wanting any of the consequences of not having it. Either way, he loses.

“No,” he says, as petulantly as he can, and Erik laughs.

“Only a short one, this time, I promise. It’s in-country and everything.”

“How far?” Charles demands, already considering the new list of names his most recent foray with Cerebro has produced, wondering which Erik wants to go after first.

“Just to Mississippi, and I’ll even take the Blackbird, so I’ll be back as soon as I’m possibly able.”

Charles still frowns, hating this, hating the whole arrangement.

He always has to stay behind, you see.

Someone needs to protect their home, protect their family.

And, as Erik has all too often pointed out, when he’s gone, there’s no one strong enough to do that but Charles.

“You’ll take help, at least? Scott and possibly Raven, if she and Hank can abide it?”

Erik looks like he’s about to argue, but Charles lets his worry overtake his face, too strong to be denied.

Sighing, Erik nods, and takes a last sip of his drink.

“I’ll take them, or Scott, at the very least, and with any luck we’ll bring back a new member of the family, maybe someone who can even make you smile, now and again.”

Charles smiles dutifully, reminding Erik that he’s the only person Charles needs around for that, and tries not to think of how ironic it is, after all these years, the way their roles have so irrevocably reversed. Erik is the one with optimism now, with hope. It’s his future they’re building, and Charles is only hoping to be able to keep them both alive long enough to actually see it.

\---

When Erik is gone recruiting, when he’s anywhere off the mansion grounds, really, and even sometimes when he’s on them, when he’s training, he puts his mental shields up, blocking any telepaths who might want to take a peak inside his mind, blocking Charles.

These absences are the loneliest times of Charles’ life - even more so than the three years he and Erik spent foolishly apart, believing the differences in their ideals meant anything in the face of the shared feelings in their hearts. At least then, even though Erik was gone from him in body, he was still close enough for Charles to touch his mind.

\---

“Why does he always go, and you always stay?” Raven asks, leaning against his bedroom doorway, arms crossed.

“You know why,” he mutters, wishing she’d let him sulk all day in bed, as had quite possibly been his master plan.

Instead, she comes inside, tisking. “None of the children are _actually_ afraid of him anymore, you do know that, right? It’s basically common knowledge at this point that he’s secretly a giant softie who, I might add, is notorious for carrying chocolate with him wherever he goes, just in case someone might need it.”

It’s true, even the chocolate bit, and Charles feels his chest constrict with the force of missing Erik. And to think, he’s only been gone for less than an hour.

“It’s not just that, and you know it. I have to keep the wards up around house, have to be here in case--”

“Alright, so you have to stay, but he doesn’t always have to go, either - have you ever thought of that? There’s enough of us now, we’re strong enough. He doesn’t always have to be the one who leaves.”

Charles wants to smile for her, knowing her anger is the product of a lingering sense of protectiveness towards him, the result of too many conversations spent comforting him in the years he and Erik were first apart. Still, she loves Erik, now, and trusts him, at least with her life, if not always with her brother’s heart.

But instead, he just shakes his head, a pleading expression on his face, and she relents, climbing into bed with him and making him succeed, finally, at smiling a little, when she cuddles close, tucking her head against his chest.

“At least you’ve always got me,” she says, voice lofty, and Charles laughs, hugging her closer.

“Thank god for that.”

\---

It’s not as if he can spend the whole time Erik is away moping, of course.

There’s far too much to do.

With Erik gone, the training falls exclusively on Charles’ shoulders, although Raven does her part, gathering the youngest students together and supervising most of their regular studies, saving their afternoon training sessions for Charles.

He’s done his best to devise a well-rounded curriculum for them - not just to practice their abilities, but to sharpen their minds. He and Erik argue about it sometimes, the value of teaching their children the classics of a dying race, but they can always agree, at least, that the key to victory is understanding, and when framed that way, even Erik will support the occasional foray into Shakespeare and Proust.

\---

He’s out on the south lawn with Darwin and Hank, watching them spar.

It’s an impressive display of strength, Hank’s beast against Darwin’s adaptability, but Charles is really watching because when they fight their minds are clear, empty of everything but movement, simple and clean, and it’s the closest thing to peace he can find, these days, with Erik still gone.

If he must endure the silence of Erik’s mind being lost to him, then he’ll at least revel in it, trying to find some calm within the silence of his own mind.

\---

On the fourth day of Erik’s absence, he finds Sean and Alex necking in a back passage tucked away in the east wing of the mansion.

They jump apart, thoughts a flurry of panic, and Alex looks ready to bolt, until Sean’s hand snaps out, closing his fingers around Alex’s wrist, holding him in place.

Sean’s look is defiant, then, and Alex graces him with a quick, grateful smile, staying where he is.

Charles sighs. How could they think he could punish them for this?

“I trust you,” is what he says, making them stop, mentally, making them blink.

“What does--” Sean begins, but Charles cuts him off with a flick of the wrist, silencing him.

“I trust you, so I trust you with each other. To care for one another, to protect each other. Whether that means in battle, or in any other aspect of life, you have a duty to each other that I trust you not to break. So if this is part of how you will look after each other, then I’m glad to see it.”

Surprise and relief drown out all other thoughts, and Charles shakes his head. “I’m in no place to judge, of course. Additionally.”

Surprise again, twinged with triumph on Sean’s part.

“I knew it,” he admits, at the gentle prodding of Charles’ mind.

“I’d rather thought it was common knowledge,” Charles remarks dryly, wondering at how skewed his own perceptions are, given the shocked thoughts still cursing through Alex.

He watches Sean squeeze Alex’s wrist, trying to draw him closer, and after a moment of resistance, Alex allows Sean to loop his arm around Alex’s waist, even leaning into the touch.

“This is our time, boys, our age. We have nothing to hide, not from each other.”

With that, Charles leaves them, and smiles with satisfaction, with relief, when he feels their thoughts turn back exclusively to each other, to the joy they find together.

\---

They have family dinners, or something close to it, every night. They’re inevitably rowdy, messy affairs, but Charles loves them, loves the cheerful clatter of so many minds and voices bubbling over each other.

He loves to watch them, when they come together like this, a real family, even if it’s just for an hour at the end of another long day playing soldiers.

\---

He still wears his bracelets, the ones Erik gave him. But Erik hardly ever uses them anymore, and only when they’re alone, which they’re so infrequently, these days.

Charles misses it, the absolute freedom that came from surrendering control, the peace in knowing that his body wouldn’t move unless Erik wanted it, too.

Most of all, he misses the look in Erik’s eyes, darkly possessive and infinitely satisfied, whenever he successfully bent Charles’ movements to his will.

\---

Erik returns from his latest recruitment mission with a young girl calling herself Rogue, and her mind is the loneliest thing Charles has ever encountered, and it makes him want to weep for her.

Her abilities prevent her from touching humans without killing them, and she has to be careful with other mutants as well. Although sporadic contact is possible, it has its consequences.

The first time she takes his ability, Charles is knocked out from the combined weight of his loss and her power, ricocheting back against his mind.

\---

“The new girl has a thing for me,” Raven announces, looking impossibly pleased with herself.

Charles is startled, by her announcement, by the truth of it he feels from inside Rogue, even though she’s in another part of the mansion entirely.

“Does that... bother you?” he asks cautiously, making Raven scoff.

“Only because I can’t act on it. She’s adorable.”

Charles raises an eyebrow. “When did that become your sort of thing?”

Raven shrugs. “Dunno, maybe it always was, and I just didn’t realize it. Things are so... different, now. And it’s okay to be different too, because everyone else is, you know? But still, I have Hank, and he’s it for me, for better or worse.”

Charles smiles weakly, looking away from her, out into the distance, where he can almost see Erik battling iron against steel in his mind’s eye.

“For better or for worse.”

\---

That summer, there’s an attack. The first they’ve faced on their own doorstep, and it’s from Frost and an army of humans, focusing her own telepathic abilities on allowing the soldiers to overcome Charles’ wards.

Without Frost’s help, their home would have been safe from the humans, Charles’ protections can do that much, but he refuses to block out mutants, to hide away the only sanctuary most of them can find. It leaves them vulnerable, has always been a point of contention amongst him and Erik, and now it’s a risk they very nearly pay for with their lives.

The moment Emma succeeds at knocking out the mental wards Charles has labored so long to sustain, it’s chaos, bedlam, guns firing and a dozen mutant powers colliding at once. Charles is racing across the grounds, trying to reach Emma, to push back at her with his mind, when to his left he sees Sean - Banshee - fighting back a dozen men with his voice, his eyes alight and shining with determination, but there are too many of them - and for a moment Charles is sure Sean is about to be overwhelmed, when out of nowhere Alex is sending a wave of energy towards them, using his hands alone, his concentration a beautiful thing to behold. Sean cheers for him, and for an instant before they both return to battle, Alex grins, wide and proud.

The fight continues, raging tumultuously until Erik is finally able to turn most of the soldiers guns again them, bullets hovering mid-air and flying against course, but even they are just a distraction, these human shields, something Emma uses to slip past their defenses, to get to Charles.

She has him on the ground, writhing in pain, beset by every mental horror imaginable, and Charles is too far gone to even hear his own screams when suddenly everything stops.

Erik has her, barbed wire torn from the fences at the edge of their property coiling around her diamond limbs, making her crack and groan.

Struggling to his feet, Charles raises a pleading hand and commands, “Stop! Erik, stop!”

Instantly, Erik does, Frost momentarily forgotten as he stares at Charles in blank confusion.

“She was killing you, Charles. She means to kill all of us.”

“I know that,” Charles allows, walking towards them. Emma has changed back into her human form, and Charles reaches out to her with his mind.

He can sense how tired she is, bone deep, exhausted beyond all telling from years of grief and anger, hunting for a kind of peace that will never come from revenge. Helping Erik kill Schmidt has taught Charles that much.

 _You don’t have to do this_ , he shouts at her as hard as his mind is able. _Please, Emma. We’re meant to be on the same side - all of us together. You believed that much once, you swore not to hurt your fellow mutants. Surely there’s some part of you who still sees the value in that, something we can do to convince you there’s still a reason for peace, for hope._

 _What could there possibly be left to hope for?_ she demands, but Charles can sense a fragment, some broken piece of her that makes Emma want to listen to what he says, to believe him.

 _The future you once believed in - where mutants live and rule together, where we are finally free to be as we are - it is not lost! It’s our dream, too, our future. Help us build it together._

Before Emma can answer, Charles feels Erik pressing at his mind, and for once, Charles is the one who shuts him out, sending Erik a quelling look.

Aloud, he says, “We have the chance to begin again - to set aside our differences and rise up from the ashes of this civilization to build a better one. But we can’t do that by turning against each other, by becoming as bad as they are, driven by fear and anger. The road to peace must begin somewhere, somehow, and why not today? Why not mercy, instead of vengeance - love instead of hate?”

“You killed the only thing I’ve ever loved,” Emma spits, her fingertips already turning to glass when Erik stops her, not with his power, but with his voice.

“If I thought I could make you believe it, I would tell you that I’m sorry - because I am. Not for his death, but for the pain it has caused you. Charles is right - you are our sister, we were made to rise up together, not to be the cause of each other’s destruction. Join us, help us make a world safe for all our kind.”

He raises a hand, extending it out to her, and Emma looks at him almost curiously, head tilted, and then back at Charles, and beyond him, to the rest of the family she came here to destroy, huddled together, waiting for her choice.

Suddenly, Raven breaks away from the others, running until she is at Charles’ side.

“You wouldn’t have to hide what you are - destroying others like you and controlling weaker minds - to be free. Here with us, you don’t have to be anything but what you are.”

“And what’s that?” Emma scoffs, her hard expression wavering when Raven only takes a step closer, a smile beginning to show on her face.

She shrugs, almost casual, and says, “One of us.”

\---

It takes them over a week to clear away all the debris left over from the battle. The grounds are half-destroyed, trees uprooted, flowerbeds upturned, but there are some compensations.

There’s Emma.

As alliances go, theirs is still shaky and tentative at best, but her personal and permanent distaste for Charles and Erik aside, things are actually going rather well. She fits in; like any new member of their home, there are awkward moments, gaps in her knowledge of their world and their knowledge of her, but she’s trying, willing to meet them halfway.

It helps considerably that she’s taken a great deal to Darwin - who lost Angel to the first attack by humans on their family. He tempers her, and she occasionally makes him laugh, a rare occurrence in the past few years. Partially under Darwin’s influence, trusting where he does, some of the younger children begin to shadow her steps, begging her to transform and cheering every time she does. Whenever this happens, this easy, warm acceptance of her difference, Charles can feel something softening a little more inside her.

After a few tense weeks, she finally begins to relax, beginning to travel almost exclusively in her diamond form. It’s not to keep Charles out - not to hide - but to finally be free, to feel at home in her own skin.

In the occasional glimpses of her mind Charles does access between transformations, he senses in Emma the almost reluctant peace she’s found here, in the acceptance of so many others like her. With Raven’s help especially, she is growing to see beauty in herself, not as a the simple human she once pretended to be, but in her true form, diamond skin glittering in the sun.

\---

Perhaps the best part of their new found peace with Emma, aside from the US government suddenly losing it’s top anti-mutant expert and advocate, is that Charles finally has another telepath around to help shoulder his load somewhat. Her powers are not yet as strong as his, but slowly he is teaching her, earning her trust at the same time, helping her develop her abilities enough to even sustain the protections around their home that she once fought to destroy.

\---

“You could go with him, now,” Raven points out one afternoon, some months following Emma’s aborted attempt at revenge.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, well, I suppose I _could_ , but it’s still a matter of--”

“Do you honestly think he won’t want you to come with him?” she demands, her impatience getting the better of her.

And to think, Charles thought he had been doing so well pretending - even to himself - that that wasn’t exactly his fear.

“I imagine he might like the break,” he admits quietly, unable to shake the nagging insecurity, the whisper that Erik must need some kind of reprieve - that anyone would - from Charles’ pathetically cloying desire to share his mind, to be with Erik every blasted moment, body and soul.

He went away for three years, once, after all. And only came back when he had mental blocks strong enough to keep Charles out whenever he wanted. And in all this time - even since Emma - he’s never once asked Charles to come with him. Not since that first time Charles said no, all those years ago in Prague.

For all the way they’ve come since then, Charles can’t help but think that there must still be some part of Erik that can’t quite forgive Charles for that.

\---

With Emma more or less settled in, and the CIA suddenly without its top woman in the hunt for mutants within their midst, some of the doubt and fear that has been plaguing Charles’ thoughts diminishes, and throughout the house there’s a general mood of calm, of relief.

Only Erik seems immune, still pacing more hours than he sleeps, still training for hours a day, out alone in the rain and the dark, bending metal to his will.

Charles tries to talk to him, tries to reach out, but as ever, when he trains, Erik’s mind is impenetrable, a fortress Charles no longer knows how to breech.

\---

“Raven informs me that it’s time for me to make you stop being an idiot,” Erik announces, wandering into their bedroom with a bewildered expression on his face.

“What?” Charles squeaks, startled by his sudden presence, by his words.

“That’s what I said,” Erik agrees, shrugging elegantly. “But she wouldn’t tell me _why_ you’re being an idiot, just that you are, and that I was to knock some sense into you by, quote, ‘whatever means necessary, even the gross kind.’”

Charles groans, putting his face in his hands.

“Charles?” Erik prompts, sounding genuinely concerned, rather than simply confused, now.

He shakes his head. “It’s alright, I’m fine. She’s just... we’re having a difference of opinion.”

“On what?”

Charles grimaces. He did rather walk into that one.

“It’s a private matter,” he deflects weakly.

Erik raises his eyebrows, concerned expression turning into a troubled frown. “Do we have those, you and I?”

Charles just looks at him helplessly, making Erik frown harder.

“I wasn’t aware there were still any secrets between us, Charles. No matter how serious or mundane.”

He’s wounded him, and Charles can feel Erik’s mind closing off to him once more, reflexive, now, and he can’t stop himself from shouting, “That! That right there - what you’re doing right this second - that’s... that’s what she and I were arguing about.”

Now it’s Erik’s turn to stare, his mind open enough again for Charles to know he’s genuinely lost for words.

“It’s been different for us, these past few years. Ever since - I used to think it was since Schmidt, since we killed him - but it started further back than that - started in Prague, when you left, when I _let_ you leave and you came back... different.”

“What are you talking about, Charles? How am I different?”

“Don’t ask me that, Erik, you know how! It’s you - your mind - it’s not _mine_ anymore, not really. There used to be no secrets between us, you’re right, no walls separating us. Not until you started building them.”

“I’ve told you, Charles - over and over - that has nothing to do with you! I’ve needed to be able to guard my mind, for protection, for focus - it was never about you!”

Charles just sighs. “I don’t believe you.”

Trapped between frustration and concern, Erik turns away from him, stalking to one end of the room and then turning sharply back around.

“There’s nothing in my mind I haven’t shared with you - nothing I’ve experienced of any value that you haven’t witnessed. But this - what I’ve done these past years, what I’m still prepared to do - it’s not something I thought you wanted to know about me, Charles. Or at least not something you wanted to look closely at. You did leave me over this sort of thing once already, you’ll remember.”

“I didn’t - I left _you_? How exactly did that happen?” Charles sputters, sudden anger taking over his shock.

“It was _our_ home, in Prague! I left everything there with you. I left _you_ there. But when I came back, you were gone.”

“You came back?”

“Of course I came back - Charles, don’t you see? I will always come for you.”

Charles exhales raggedly and runs a shaking hand through his hair.

“Jesus, Erik. You say you don’t want secrets between us, all the while you’re sitting on something like this?”

Erik looks down at the floor before staring up definitely at Charles. “It wasn’t a secret. Or at least I didn’t mean for it to be. I simply thought that you still, well, preferred not to look.”

Charles shakes his head. “What have you done that’s so terrible, what have you done that I haven’t watched you do - or done myself - that would make you hide this from me? Make you think I wanted you to?”

“I’ve killed people, Charles,” Erik says simply.

Charles waves an impatient hand. “I know that - but so have I.”

Erik smiles, bitter and strange, and says, “Yes, but I’ve _enjoyed_ it.”

Erik waits, then, as if he genuinely expects Charles to flinch, or withdraw.

Instead, Charles takes a step towards him, and then another, letting his mind join with Erik’s, blending their thoughts as he so often used to, until finally they are one.

Frozen in Charles’ mental embrace, Erik blinks back a tear, and Charles closes the rest of the distance between them, his hands coming up to cup Erik’s face.

“All that you are, for better or for worse, I want you with me. You are mine, now and always.”

Erik shivers a little at his touch, but leans into it helplessly, and Charles sends him other images, flashes of his own insecurity, his fears that Erik has lost faith in him, lost love.

For a very long time, Erik says nothing, the silence stretching out between them, threatening to undo them again, but then Erik covers Charles’ hands with his own, and says, enunciating very carefully, their eyes locked, “Charles. Stop being an idiot.”

Charles barks a startled laugh, pressing his forehead to Erik’s. “I will if you will.”

\---

True to their word, after their conversation, both Erik and Charles do their level best to stop being such foolish idiots.

“Hysterical jackasses, is more like it,” Raven points out on more than one occasion.

“You really thought Erik didn’t trust you anymore?” Hanks just asks, baffled, when Charles admits it to him later.

“God, get a room, guys,” is what Alex adds, one morning they get caught necking like teenagers in the kitchen, laughing, his arm curled around Sean’s shoulders in a casual display of possessiveness.

Teasing aside, they’re working at it, relearning each other, remembering, slowly but surely, how to be together again.

The first time Charles compels Erik, even just a little, the answering look on his face is so gorgeous that Charles has to grab onto him, has to drag him, hands and mouth, up to their bedroom. Erik goes freely, knocking Charles’ hands off of him and pinning Charles to the bed by the wrists before the door even closes behind them.

\---

It’s the end of another day, another family dinner, gathered together - all 17 of them, now, new recruits blending with old, bonds forming in the most unlikely of places - and Charles looks out onto the long table at all the people he’s come to love, the one’s he’d gladly die to protect, but would much rather live for, fight for, each day until his last.

He smiles, unable to control his happiness, knowing he’s sending it out to all of them, touching their minds, filling their hearts, and at the other end of the table, his eyes lock with Erik’s and Erik smiles back, raising his glass to Charles.

Charles sends him a pulse of love, involuntary and true, and even though Erik is halfway across the room, his mind is shared with Charles, a space they can occupy together, no matter the distance between them.


	3. we'll stand together unbending and joyful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A weird little look into Erik’s side of things during his and Charles’ separation in _our hearts won’t rust_. Mostly featuring pining and Nazi-killing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For dancinbutterfly, who asked. ♥

Schmidt is not in Quebec City, and Erik is surprised to be surprised.

He tries to be satisfied with killing the former associate of Schmidt’s who sold him out, and the two other ex-Nazi officers living in the city the snitch told him about, right before Erik watched the life drain out of his eyes.

It’s hardly enough to justify being deprived of Charles for so long, and Erik spends the entire flight back to Prague focusing very hard on not using his abilities to make the plane go _faster_.

\---

He runs up the stairs to their apartment two at a time, flush with the promise of finally seeing Charles again, of having a chance to talk to him, to set things right, or at least to put them aside, behind them where they belong.

He’s grinning when he throws the door open, he can’t help it, can’t help the bottomless joy and _need_ that presses against his chest at the thought of finally being with Charles again after all these weeks - but when he enters the apartment, he finds it empty.

Not the kind of empty that could be excused by a trip to the grocer or a casual stroll around the block.

The kind of empty where dust has begun to line every surface, the kind that echos at the slightest sound.

The kind of empty that means that Charles has left, has left _him_ , and has given no indication that he will be coming back.

Erik’s hands clench into fists, his thoughts coalescing into a single, mindless howl of loss and rage, and then everywhere is the sound of metal breaking apart, drywall and brick crumbling and cracking as the building he has come to think of - impossibly, foolishly - as _home_ comes crashing down around him.

He is saved from the caved in roof, from the destruction all around him, his power deflecting everything, an instinctual sense of self-preservation kicking in, the same steel and iron he’s using to bring down the building keeping him safe, until he finally steps out of the rubble untouched, caring not for the bodies he must also step over, now as broken and bloodied as Erik feels.

\---

He loses a year to near-mindless killing. He draws no lines between civilians and soldiers, former or otherwise, certain that the enemy is everywhere, certain most of all that no one who might remember his face can be trusted long enough to let live.

\---

To mark the one year anniversary of his trip to Quebec City, Erik kills a dozen men in a month, but it brings him no closer to Schmidt.

It brings him no closer to forgetting Charles.

It brings him no closer to hating him, either, no closer to feeling anything for Charles but endless, crushing love.

\---

He travels alone. He’s always traveled alone, but he used to believe he wasn’t lonely.

It’s a lie he’s unable to convince himself of any longer.

\---

There is a woman at a bar in Istanbul who reminds him of Charles. A strange comparison, perhaps, but true. It’s in her eyes, the intelligence so startling she demands to be listened to, in her humor, which he indulges himself in for an hour, in the quietly cocky and frustratingly charming way she speaks and moves her hips. And most of all, it’s in the way she dares to laugh at him, something that no one but Charles has done since he was a boy.

He thinks about taking her back to his hotel room, thinks about whispering endearments and half-truths into her ear, pouring his need for Charles into her beautiful sunkissed skin, but Erik has loved and lost enough for this lifetime already, and he will not open himself up to the opportunity to risk even a fraction of feeling for her, even if that fraction would only be for the echos of Charles he finds in her.

\---

He kills a man in Moscow just to watch him die.

That isn’t entirely true, of course, not really, but it’s close enough for Erik to be glad, for once, that Charles isn’t there to see what he’s done.

\---

Sometimes he smokes Charles’ brand of cigarettes to remember him better, to conjure up the smell of him, the feel of his fingers, blunt and yet so very clever, the taste of his tongue, tangy and just a little bitter, pressing eagerly into Erik’s willing mouth.

\---

He thinks he sees Charles everywhere. In the street, in passing cars, in distorted reflections in far off windows and in the faces of every brown-haired, sweet-lipped boy he meets in back-alleys and nondescript bars.

\---

He thinks sometimes that this will be what finally breaks him, what turns him from a weapon into nothing at all, ruining him entirely, separating him irrevocably from any use at all. But then he will remember Charles’ smile, or the look in his eyes when he first held Erik’s face in his hands and _forced_ Erik not to look away when he told Erik he loved him, truly loved him, and Erik will know that he has to keep on living, keep on fighting, chasing another moment when he might remember those things again, as perfect and clear as if they were happening for the first time.

\---

He is in a hotel room in Tokyo when he feels it.

A slight tug at the back of his mind, dizzying and familiar, and then another, a hesitant press further, almost like a request for permission.

Erik slumps in his seat, boneless, his breath suddenly ragged, grasping, but his mind is open, pleading, and that’s when he feels it - feels _Charles_ \- everywhere. In his head, in his heart, in every inch of him down to the tips of his finger and toes, Charles is surrounding him, reminding him what it’s like to have a heart and not simply want to cut it out, reminding him there are other things to feel but anger and betrayal.

It only lasts for a minute, maybe two, blessed and far too good to lose, but still the echos of Charles keep him shuddering, reaching to touch himself and to close his eyes, clinging to every shared sense, every fleeting moment of certainty that out there, somewhere, Charles was missing him too.

Needing him too.

\---

He starts tracking Charles, after that. His dedication to this search is matched only by his need to find Schmidt, and even that is set aside in light of his choking desire to know where Charles is, to gaze upon him once more and to know that he really is still out there somewhere, safe and whole.

Charles is considerably easier to find than Schmidt, of course, but Erik feels a satisfaction in finding Charles he doubts even finding and killing Schmidt would be able to bring him, now. It’s a hard lesson to learn, too late to change Charles’ mind, too late to stop himself from leaving all those months ago, but that doesn’t stop Erik looking, whenever he can and as closely as he can, at the only thing he’s ever thought to want more than revenge.


End file.
